From The Dead (9 page)

‘Are you married?’

‘What?’

‘I’m just making conversation. I mean, I presume that woman I met the other night . . .’

‘We just live together,’ Thorne said. ‘Off and on. I don’t mean that the relationship is off and on. I mean . . . we have our own places.’

‘Sensible.’

‘I’m glad you approve.’

‘What does she do?’

‘She’s a police officer.’ Thorne shoved the remains of his sandwich back into its bag. ‘Not that it’s any of your business.’

Anna held up her hands. ‘Sorry.’ She turned towards the window. ‘
Again
.’

Thorne wasn’t sorry. It had needed saying, all of it. In spite of that, he started to feel a little guilty, watching her stare out at the damp and desolate Yorkshire landscape as the silence grew between them. She looked like a teenager who wanted to be older, trying hard not to show that she cared about being slapped down. She looked thwarted, and Thorne found himself thinking she was probably used to feeling like that. He also found himself wanting to know more about the ‘bloke she worked for’. Wishing she would start jabbering again.

‘Look, it
was
out of order,’ he said, ‘But you were probably right. That stuff about Monahan’s son.’

She turned from the window.

‘I’m not saying that I’d want you to do it again, OK? But, yes, it seemed to do the trick. It got the right reaction.’

She mumbled a ‘thanks’, doing her best not to look as delighted as she clearly was.

‘That little speech at the end was pretty good, too. Were you just winding him up, or . . . ?’

‘Meant every word,’ Anna said.

‘Prisoners don’t
actually
shit in buckets any more, but aside from that it was very moving.’

Thorne had not seen her laugh before, not really. They were the best moments of an average day.

He wandered into the huge prison kitchen and made straight for the storage room at the far end. A couple of inmates he did not know well clocked him and went back to what they were doing, the less seen or said the better. Eventually, he caught the eye of the trustee he was looking for. He pointed towards the storeroom and patted his pocket. The trustee nodded, silently agreeing to watch the door in return for some future favour.

The deal was done with just a look, the smallest of gestures.

He shut the heavy door of the storeroom behind him, sat down alongside a rack of metal shelves stacked with catering-sized cans of soup, tomatoes and kidney beans. He took out the phone. It was small, out of necessity, and a basic model, but he did not need bells and whistles.

The call was answered quickly.

‘You took your time,’ the man said.

‘It’s the first chance I’ve had to call.’

‘Busy schedule?’

Voices were raised right outside the door. He told the man to hang on, closed his hand around the phone, waited a minute. ‘Sorry about that.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Don’t worry, it’s safe.’

‘No point taking stupid risks . . .’

‘Listen, there were coppers here today.’

‘I know.’

‘Visits Area still stinks of bacon.’

‘Why do you think I sent the text?’

‘So, what do you want me to do?’

The man paused, like he was taking a sip of something. ‘I want you to start earning your money.’

Without feeling the need to check with Thorne, Louise had invited Phil Hendricks over. He arrived just as she was dishing up the pasta, a whiff of carbolic still lingering around him and cans of beer clanking in a plastic bag.

Thorne could see straight away that his friend was keen to kick back a little. ‘Tough day at the office, dear?’

‘I could do with a drink,’ Hendricks said. ‘Been cutting up a teenager all afternoon.’ He took a can from the bag and opened it. ‘I mean, obviously he’d already been cut up by several
other
teenagers.’ He dropped his long black coat on to the sofa and sat down at the small dining table.

As Home Office-registered forensic pathologists went, Phil Hendricks was unusual, to say the least. Thorne had certainly not met any others with shaved heads, multiple body piercings and more tattoos than the average heavy metal guitarist. He had never met one as skilled either, or as empathetic to the victims he dissected. The jokes – delivered with immaculate timing in a flat, Mancunian accent – were often tasteless, but Thorne knew what was going on behind them.

He had seen his friend’s pain up close and often.

‘That smells fantastic, Lou.’

It had been a while since Hendricks had treated himself to a new piercing, something he usually did to mark the acquisition of a new boyfriend, but he was keen to show off his latest tattoo: a scattering of small red stars on his right shoulder.

‘Looks like designer acne,’ Thorne said.

Hendricks was chewing, so just stuck up a finger.

‘Didn’t fancy the “Sodomy” tat then?’ Louise asked.

A few months earlier, a City-based chaplain had made headlines by saying that gay men should be ‘marked’ with government health warnings, like cigarette packets. His suggestion that they have ‘Sodomy Can Seriously Damage Your Health’ tattooed across their buttocks had caused predictable outrage and eventually forced the priest into hiding. ‘I’m going to hunt the God-bothering little gobshite down,’ Hendricks had said at the time. ‘Damage
his
health.’

Now, he shook his head and grinned. ‘Decided against it in the end,’ he said. ‘Mainly because I couldn’t fit all those words across my perfectly tight little arse.’

Louise laughed and said that she would have had no trouble. In a decent-sized font. In capital letters.

Thorne talked about his trip to Wakefield, about Monahan’s refusal to admit that the body in the Jag had not been Alan Langford’s. About the need to prove that Monahan was being paid to keep quiet.

‘If he’s not going to cough, I don’t see what else you can do.’ Louise poured herself and Thorne more wine. ‘You’re only likely to get anywhere by following the money.’

‘That won’t get us very far though, will it?’

‘Sorry, but you’re not going to get it on a plate, darling.’

Ten years earlier, Hendricks had carried out the post-mortem on the body that had been found in Epping Forest. What had been left of it. ‘You could always exhume the remains,’ he said. ‘There might be the odd blackened molar knocking around in the ashes. But even dental won’t help unless you’ve got some idea who the victim was.’

‘Which we haven’t.’

‘So, you’re pretty much stuffed, mate. As long shots go, it’s right up there with Tottenham getting a top-four finish.’

‘Shouldn’t you be heading home?’ Thorne said.

They finished eating, opened another bottle and a couple more cans. Thorne put on a new CD of stripped-down Willie Nelson recordings and Hendricks told him that it sounded as though someone was slowly feeding a cat through a mangle. Thorne pointed out that, as usual, Hendricks had now slagged off both his football team
and
his taste in music, and asked to be reminded exactly why Hendricks considered himself to be a friend. Hendricks said it was less about being a ‘friend’ and more to do with being the only person Thorne did not actually sleep with who was willing to put up with him.

Louise started gathering the plates, scraping at the leftovers. ‘Who did you go up to Wakefield with today?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Boys’ day out with Dave Holland, was it?’

Thorne looked for something other than simple curiosity in her face and felt blood move inexplicably to his own. He hesitated, began rubbing at a mark his glass had left on the table. ‘Actually, I took that private detective with me,’ he said. ‘The one who popped round here the other night.
Had
to take her, in the end.’

‘The girl?’

Thorne shrugged, pulled a face that he hoped would say, ‘Ridiculous, I know,’ and explained: ‘Jesmond thinks we need to keep her on side, make sure she doesn’t go blabbing to the papers about the fact that we screwed up with the Langford case.’ He knew he was talking too fast, sounded as though he were lying. ‘Pain in the arse, as it turned out, just like I told Jesmond it would be, but there we are. I got well and truly lumbered. What can I tell you?’

‘You don’t have to tell me anything,’ Louise said, laughing. ‘I just asked a simple question.’

She carried the plates out to the kitchen and began to load the dishwasher. Thorne looked over and saw Hendricks mouthing a ‘What?’ He waved the question away and stood up to change the CD.

Louise shouted from the kitchen: ‘Do you want coffee, Phil?’

‘No, I’m fine,’ Hendricks said. ‘I’ll be up all night, and not in a good way.’

Thorne looked along the rack of albums, trying to decide whether Louise’s laugh had been forced or genuine. He could not be sure either way, but was fairly confident that the subject would resurface once Hendricks had left.

Louise appeared in the doorway. ‘You sure?’

‘I think I should probably be heading off.’

‘I’ve got decaf.’

‘Why don’t you just stay the night?’ Thorne asked.

Monahan’s stomach had been plaguing him since late morning. He had been in and out of the toilets half a dozen times since the session with Thorne and his bitch of a sidekick, and whatever the hell was in the meat pie he’d had for dinner had made things a damn sight worse. He lay on his bunk, listening to his guts grumble and the voices echoing on the landing outside the cell door.

Animal noises.

When he was not in the Segregation Unit, this was his favourite part of the day. The hour he liked best. On his own, reading or smoking, while the other inmates got through association their own way, playing table tennis, working out or whatever. A bubble of peace, with the rest of the prison moving around him. He enjoyed the stillness – such as it was, with six hundred other blokes sharing the oxygen – but knew there was company just a few feet away, if ever he wanted it. He far preferred being alone in a crowd to those stinking, scratchy hours of genuine isolation, even though he’d always brought them on himself.

It was like he’d said to Thorne, though. Sometimes he just couldn’t help himself.

Be nice to get out that bit sooner and see him.

He thought about what Thorne had said, the request for help that was really an offer. However tempting it might be, he knew it was short-term thinking.
Dangerous
thinking. The money being set aside every month for his release was a threat as well as a promise; he had always understood that. It put a price on his silence, but never let him forget what shooting his mouth off would cost him.

His life and his son’s life, no question about that.

Living is what counts, right?

He thought about the man who promised and threatened so much, and above the sound of the acid bubbling in his gut, he heard the hiss and crackle of a fire. The
whump
of an explosion and the distant drumming of a woodpecker.

‘Paul?’

There was a knock on the open cell door and Monahan sat up. Jeremy Grover was a con he got on with better than most. He did his time quietly enough and was fairly bright, as armed robbers went.

‘Jez.’

‘Thought you were coming to play cards.’

‘Sorry, mate, my belly’s a nightmare.’

‘I’ll have some tea then, if you’re getting a brew on.’

Monahan swung his feet to the floor and walked over to where the kettle stood on a small table in the corner. He asked who was winning all the money, reached for a mug and promised to take all the lads to the cleaners as soon as he stopped shitting through the eye of a needle. Then he turned to say something else and stepped into a punch that pushed the breath from his lungs in an instant. Grover’s breath hot and sour on his face.

‘Jez . . . ?’

Only it wasn’t a punch, course it wasn’t, and there was already blood pooling on the floor as he slipped down to his knees and then dropped on to his side. It was hard to raise his head and he was scared to look at what was leaking into his hands. He saw Grover lean back against the door and then step forward as an officer pushed his way into the cell. He watched them speak while his guts slipped, warm between his fingers, but he could hear nothing, not really, until the officer had gone again and an alarm began to sound from a long way away.

The man on the prison security desk had as little to say to Dave Holland as he had done to Thorne’s more garrulous female colleague twenty-four hours earlier. There was no question of Anna Carpenter accompanying Thorne this time, not considering the reason he was returning to Wakefield.

Brigstocke had called just after 6 a.m., in no mood for going round the houses. ‘Whoever was paying Paul Monahan to keep quiet can cancel the direct debit,’ he said.

The Crime Scene Investigators from the West Yorkshire force had already been and gone, but the murder scene was still sealed off with blue tape that stretched from the cell door to the edge of the landing. Thorne and Holland were escorted on to the wing by a prison officer and met outside the cell by a grim-looking welcoming committee. Sonia Murray, an attractive black woman in her early thirties, was the prison’s police liaison officer. She made herself known, then introduced Andy Boyle, the local DI, whose team had been on call when the incident had occurred.

Boyle seemed less than thrilled to meet his colleagues from down south. ‘If we have to work together on this,’ he said, ‘I suppose we have to.’ The Yorkshireman was clearly no shrinking violet, but he still had to raise his voice to make himself heard above the shouts and jeers that echoed along the landing. The entire wing had been confined to their cells for more than fifteen hours, since the body had been found, and the prisoners were not shy about making their feelings known. ‘It’s not ideal though, is it?’

‘We’ll try not to step on anyone’s toes,’ Holland said.

Thorne forced a smile, but was beyond caring if it was convincing. ‘And if we do, we’ll make sure we’re wearing slippers.’